NASCAR's next-generation car will debut in 2021

NASCAR has spent the past half-decade laying the groundwork for its next-generation race car and engine.

Now there is an ETA: February 2021.

NASCAR hopes to unveil its 'seventh-generation' race car in time for Daytona Speedweeks in three years with a next-generation engine to follow shortly thereafter.

During the annual media briefing held at the Research & Development Center in Concord, North Carolina on Monday, NASCAR executiv vice president and chief racing development officer Steve O'Donnell provided a status update for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Gen-7 machine.

He said that 2019 rules package is a sort of segue from right now to the next-generation platform. For tracks a mile and larger this season, NASCAR has mandated horsepower targets of 550 using tapered spacers placed on the engine. That number is important because NASCAR officials have stated repeatedly that future engines will likely feature lower horsepower numbers at the request of prospective new manufacturers.

"The reason we headed in this direction with the 2019 rules package was really to align us with where we wanted to go in the future from a racing standpoint, both on track from a car’s look and feel and then under the hood from an engine perspective," O’Donnell said. "If you look at a lot of the dialogue we’ve had with our existing OEMs, potential OEMs, there’s a lot of interest to do some things differently in terms of making the cars look even more like they do on the street.

"So what we’ve done is spent the better part of a year putting together a Gen-7 model. We’re in process now of going out and talking to OEMs, talking in the industry and getting their feedback on what they like and what they may want to see tweaked, but the goal for us is to roll this out fairly quickly with an accelerated timeline to 2021, but again this rules package — particularly the engine horsepower — allows us to have some discussion around a more relevant engine that aligns around the 2021 package."

While the next-generation body will debut in 2021, the earliest a new engine will debut is 2022.

John Probst, NASCAR's vice president of innovation and racing development, also revealed that the Gen-7 will "almost certainly" feature bodies constructed from a flange fit composite material instead of steel.

Composite body cars debuted in the NASCAR Xfinity Series last season and have been used in both the K&N Pro Series and ARCA since 2015.

NASCAR is also expected to maintain a 'common template' style body, but Probst was adamant that they "will look different from each other." Simply stated, like the current generation of cars, each manufacturer will have commonalities in aerodynamically-sensitive areas but will be allowed to differentiate from each other elsewhere.

O'Donnell had previously stated that the next-generation car would not feature a splitter, but backed-off from that sentiment on Monday, simply saying "it will look cool."

The current body has been in use since the 2013 season. Chevrolet, Ford and Toyota are the only three OEMs to have raced on the platform. Dodge developed a Gen-6 body but pulled support from NASCAR halfway through the project. It won the 2012 championship with Team Penske and Brad Keselowski and left all three national tours.

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